Trump’s plan to end DACA could lead to influx of ‘Dreamers’ in Canada

President Donald Trump’s threat to end protections for those who entered the U.S. illegally as children could spark a new wave of immigration and asylum requests, some analysts warn.

If that happens, they say, Canada’s already stressed systems would come under further pressure and potentially intensify a backlash against newcomers.

About 1.7 million illegal migrants to the United States – the vast majority of them Mexicans – are either registered or qualify for registration under a five-year-old policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. The program, which Trump wants ended, allows them to obtain work permits and protects them from deportation.

If even a fraction of those look north, it would still be a significant number of so-called Dreamers who might try to make Canada home.

Guidy Mamann, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst in Toronto, says he has already started getting calls and emails asking if Canada is an option.

“Now that there is a real question as to whether or not there is a permanent solution for these DACA kids, many of them are going to start to look towards Canada for both legal and possibly illegal entry,” Mamann said. “I suspect that we’re going to start seeing a real flow at this point because there is so much uncertainty.”

Younger Mexicans in the U.S. – those without completed higher education or solid work experience – are unlikely to qualify under Canada’s normal immigrant requirements. As a result, some might opt to claim refugee status, a process likely to take several years to play out, even for those whose claims are rejected.

Martha Batiz, an award-winning Mexican-Canadian writer and academic, said Canada would do well to put a system in place to welcome Dreamers, many of whom have grown up in the U.S. and are therefore culturally adapted and speak English as well as Spanish.

Otherwise, she said, they might feel desperate enough to create the kind of risky and uncontrolled influx recently seen with Haitian and African migrants.

“Canada has to step up,” Batiz said. “It would be better to have some system in place, even if it’s an imperfect system, so that (Dreamers) can apply legally, and Canada can decide who they are going to welcome.” (Source: Globe & Mail)

Canada’s Army Builds Tent Camp For Haitian Asylum-Seekers Arriving From U.S.

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The Canadian military is building a temporary shelter near the border with the United States, to accommodate hundreds of asylum-seekers crossing illegally from the U.S. into Quebec.

June 2, 2017

Most of those arrivals are Haitians who were admitted to the U.S. after the earthquake in 2010, and whose future legal status in America is unclear.

Dan Karpenchuk, reporting for NPR, says the Canadian service members are only building the camp, not remaining afterward to staff it.

“The camp will hold as many as 500 seekers, about the number of asylum-seekers waiting to be processed,” Karpenchuk reports. “The soldiers will also set up lighting [and] heating, and install flooring. They will not have security roles.”

May 11, 2017

The CBC reports that currently, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a tent set up at the border to handle processing — but there are no beds. People spend two to three days waiting on benches and chairs.

The soldiers, at the request of Public Safety Canada, are assembling a camp at a nearby “converted private campsite,” the CBC reports.

“Setting up tents, this is something obviously we’re quite familiar with, we’re pretty good at doing this,” Maj. Yves Desbiens, the spokesperson on the ground for the Canadian Armed Forces, told the Canadian broadcaster. “But in terms of these capacities, this is not something we do often.”

February 10, 2017

The tent camp on the border is just the first stop for asylum-seekers.

“After they’re processed, the asylum-seekers will be bused to Montreal, where they will be put up in other temporary accommodation, including the Olympic Stadium, a former convent and now a facility at one of the city’s hospitals,” Karpenchuk says.

As we reported last week, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium has just recently been pressed into service to house asylum-seekers, after normal facilities were overwhelmed. But it’s only a temporary option, since the stadium won’t be available during upcoming events.

June 29, 2016

The surge has, by all accounts, been dramatic. Last week, a spokesperson for the provincial government organization that helps asylum-seekers told the CBC that the group helped about 180 people last July — and that more than 1,000 people crossed the border this July.

Immigration Canada told the CBC on Wednesday that crossings at one point along the border have quadrupled in just the past two weeks. (Source: NPR)

Central American corridor a dangerous route for migrants heading to Canada

One of the world’s busiest migrant corridors runs from Central America through Mexico.

For decades, migrants from the northern triangle of that region — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — have fled countries plagued by endemic levels of violence and crime in the hopes of crossing the Mexican border and eventually seeking asylum in the United States.

November 25, 2015

But migration experts say the profile of those using that route is rapidly changing.

With European borders tightening and increased anti-immigration anxiety in the United States, a rising number of migrants from as far away as Africa and Asia are turning to the Central American migrant corridor in the hopes of reaching a new promised land: Canada.

Tapachula, in the Chiapas region of Mexico, is a key transit hub on the Mexican-Guatemalan border. CBC News met dozens of migrants there, young men and women who fled their homes in Somalia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Haiti.

November 18, 2015

Many say they began their journeys — which take between three and five months and cost upwards of $20,000 US — with Canada in mind. Others changed their plans and want to reach Canada in fear of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

All have faced extraordinary journeys to reach Tapachula — threatened by smugglers, robbed at gunpoint, trekking through jungles with little food or water.

The majority of African and Asian migrants enter South America through Brazil or Bolivia, countries that in some cases they can enter without a visa.

They travel by boat, bus or foot through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala — countries that grant them temporary visas of 20 days to transit through the country — before reaching the Mexican border.

Almost none speak any Spanish. They are easy targets for violent smugglers and extortion by immigration agents along the well-trodden route. (Source: CBC News)

Will disillusioned U.S. voters really move to Canada?

The election of Donald Trump has some Americans looking north, perhaps to make a new home in a country removed from Trump’s style of Republicanism. Many said jokingly if Trump were elected, they would move to Canada. For some, it’s no longer a joke. But moving north might not be so easy.

“You’ll never be my president, because I’m moving to Canada!,” shouted one protester, strongly opposed to a Trump presidency.

The declaration was born in anger and frustration, but also reflects what many Americans have been soberly contemplating.

On election night in the United States, an unusual occurrence took place with the computer systems of the Canada Immigration and Citizenshipdepartment. They crashed, more than once, and remained offline for hours. Canadian officials confirm that it was because of a spike in the amount of web traffic, most of it coming from the U.S.

But while the interest is acute, immigration lawyers like Lee Cohen warn that getting into Canada isn’t as easy as packing up and heading north.

“Immigrating to Canada is a complex, paper-intensive, time-consuming process with a little bit of expense attached to it,” Cohen said.

Canada normally accepts only 6,000 American immigrants a year. Officials are expecting many times that number in the wake of the election.

As for coming to Toronto, most Americans will be deterred when they find out the cost of housing in one of Canada’s hottest real estate markets. (Source: NPR)

Kellie Leitch defends ‘anti-Canadian values’ survey question

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is defending a contentious survey question from her campaign team that asked supporters what they think about vetting would-be immigrants and refugees for “anti-Canadian values.”

May 4, 2016

The survey made headlines on Thursday, with at least one Conservative strategist calling for her to withdraw from the race.

“Canadians can expect to hear more, not less from me, on this topic in the coming months,” Leitch wrote in an emailed statement.

“Screening potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms is a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about.”

September 22, 2015

The rest of the survey, which was sent to those who signed up for news from the Leitch campaign, gauges support on a variety of issues, including electoral reform, corporate tax cuts and the legalization and regulation of marijuana for recreational use.

One question refers to denying citizenship to someone who recants the pledge to the Queen after taking it; another asks about incarcerating terrorists instead of providing “therapy and counselling.”